U+3008 · Opening punctuation
Left Angle Bracket Symbol 〈
〈 is left angle bracket, U+3008, in the CJK Symbols and Punctuation block. It was added in Unicode 1.1, and Unicode files it under Opening punctuation.
Also known as
Unicode 1.0 called this character opening angle bracket. The standard renamed it later, but documents, fonts and font-editing tools from that era still use the old name.
Codes & technical data
| Unicode | U+3008 | |
|---|---|---|
| HTML hex | 〈 | |
| HTML decimal | 〈 | |
| CSS | \3008 | |
| JavaScript | \u{3008} | |
| Python | \U00003008 | |
| Java / C# | \u3008 | |
| Rust | \u{3008} | |
| Swift | \u{3008} | |
| PHP | \u{3008} | |
| URL encoded | %E3%80%88 | |
| UTF-8 bytes | E3 80 88 | |
| UTF-16 bytes | 3008 | |
| Base64 | 44CI | |
| Decimal | 12296 | |
| Category | Opening punctuation (Ps) | |
| Introduced | Unicode 1.1 | |
Will 〈 survive being pasted?
- Normalisation. Yes. 〈 is unchanged by NFKC, so it survives normalising systems intact.
- Legacy encodings. 〈 is Unicode-only — it has no Latin-1 equivalent, so a system stuck on an 8-bit encoding cannot represent it.
- Size. 3 bytes in UTF-8. Character-limited fields — SMS, bios, some form validators — usually count bytes, not characters.
Unicode cross-references
The standard points readers of 〈 at these characters — usually because they look alike, or because one is the correct choice where the other is often used by mistake.
Other bracket characters
Unicode names 24 characters ending in “bracket”. They differ by direction, weight or decoration rather than by meaning.
Nearby in CJK Symbols and Punctuation
The punctuation Chinese, Japanese and Korean typography needs — the ideographic full stop and comma, corner brackets, the iteration mark, and the wave dash.
How to type 〈
| Windows | Type 3008 then press Alt+X |
|---|---|
| macOS | Press Ctrl+Cmd+Space, then search for “left angle bracket” |
| Linux | Press Ctrl+Shift+U, type 3008, press Enter |
| HTML | 〈 |
About Unicode’s Opening punctuation category
This is an opening bracket. Editors that highlight matching pairs, and bidirectional text algorithms, both key off this category rather than off the glyph.
Frequently asked questions
- How do I type the 〈 left angle bracket symbol?
- On Windows, type 3008 and press Alt+X. On Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U then 3008. On any system the quickest route is the copy button on this page.
- What is the code for 〈?
- Left Angle Bracket is U+3008. In UTF-8 it takes 3 bytes. The table above lists every escape format.
- What kind of character is 〈?
- Left Angle Bracket is filed under Opening punctuation in the CJK Symbols and Punctuation block, and was introduced in Unicode 1.1. This is an opening bracket. Editors that highlight matching pairs, and bidirectional text algorithms, both key off this category rather than off the glyph.